CHAPTER TWELVE
“I’m Sarah Manners. Who’s asking?” Cotter
looked up from an Internet terminal at the library counter and put on his best
smile.
“Oh.” The man’s face fell. “I’m sorry, I was
expecting someone else. Sorry to have bothered you.” He made to leave, looking
very upset.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” said Cotter,
starting to panic but somehow managing to appear outwardly calm. “I have a
namesake then, do I?” He forced a laugh.
James Morrissey hesitated then briefly explained that Sarah was an
old friend with whom he had lost touch
some years ago. “So you see I was hoping...” he finished lamely.
Cotter swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry,” he sympathised while his mind
tried to grapple with the implications. “Look, you’re upset and I’ll be closing
up soon anyway. So why don’t you come and have a nice cup of tea at the
cottage? It’s not far and you can tell me all about it. Sometimes it helps to
talk to strangers, you know. And I’m a good listener,” he assured Morrissey,
effortlessly injecting some warmth into his voice as if he truly believed what
he was saying. Indeed, his concern for
James Morrissey was perfectly genuine in the immediate sense. It came, however,
from the Sarah Manners persona. Ralph Cotter, on the other hand, continued to
fret. Daz was away on business. He must come home at once. Daz would know what
to do for the best.
“That’s very kind of you,” James Morrissey began to protest, “but I
couldn’t impose.”
“Nonsense, we have a reputation for hospitality here in Monk’s
Tallow. You wouldn’t have me let the side down, would you?”
“In that case...” James Morrissey capitulated. The woman’s eyes
twinkled at him with a pleased expression and, inexplicably, he suddenly felt
sorry for her. His eyes fell on the wedding ring as she closed down the
computer. Then he saw the bracelet. It was a gold charm bracelet like the one
he had given Sarah on the first anniversary of their meeting all those years
ago. His stomach gave the queerest lurch. It had to be the most amazing
coincidence…well, didn’t it?
A feeling of unease washed over James Morrissey as he waited at the
library counter for the small woman to complete a variety of locking up
procedures. A short while later, they drove in his car to a pretty cottage situated
at the other end of the village. Once inside, he began to relax although unable
to shake off nervousness he was inclined to put down to his own state of mind
rather than being in the woman’s company. She had a certain charm, he couldn’t
deny. It helped, too, to talk. Over several cups of tea, he told her the whole
story in a way he hadn’t done for years. She listened patiently, nodding
sympathetically from time to time and rarely interrupting. “I bought her a
bracelet just like yours,” he found himself confiding, close to tears. “May I
see it?”
Cotter’s heart sank. He held out his wrist but quickly withdrew it.
“I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey, he commiserated weakly, “Coincidence
can be so painful.” On this note, he
pleaded a call of nature and hurried to the loo. It meant passing through the
kitchen and he paused to call Daz, for the fifth time, on the mobile. Yet again, there was no response. “Damn,
damn, damn!” wailed the bogus Sarah Manners and made a dash for the toilet.
James Morrissey felt increasingly uncomfortable. There had been
charms on the bracelet identical to those he had given Sarah from time to time.
While it could only be co-incidence, it was very unsettling. He should not have
come here, he told himself, resolving to take his leave as soon as the woman
returned. Sarah appeared, however, to
have anticipated him and immediately crossed to a drinks cabinet upon
re-entering the room.
“I think we both need something stronger than tea,” Cotter smiled
encouragingly. “I simply can’t get over how uncanny it all is, especially with
your Sarah being a librarian too. It certainly takes all sorts to make world,”
he tittered and held up a bottle of scotch.
James Morrissey shook his head. “A shot of vodka would go down a
treat, if you insist.”
“I do insist, I most certainly do,” Cotter reiterated, turning away
slightly to slip several tiny white pills into his guest’s glass.
“You’re very kind,” murmured Morrissey automatically and wished she
would sit down instead of fidgeting with the drink and regarding him with a
frank curiosity he found disturbing. She struck him as being somewhat spaced
out for several minutes then gave a little start, handed him his drink and sat
down again nursing her own.
“It’s the least I can do. I mean, I’m the cause of this little wild
goose chase of yours. You must be devastated.” Cotter tried to sound sincere.
“I wouldn’t go quite that far,” Morrissey emphasized as he sipped at
his drink and enjoyed the flow of warmth into a queasy stomach. “It’s my own
fault for expecting the unlikely. When Ruth wrote to me...” and went on to talk
about Ruth Temple. The woman sitting opposite him nodded and smiled, smiled and
nodded, but became increasingly agitated. “Is there anything wrong?” stifling a
yawn that had crept up on him unawares.
“Not at all, I’m just so distressed for you. I only wish...” Cotter
leaned forward and refilled his guest’s glass as well as his own. “Don’t forget
I have to drive back to the hotel,” Morrissey half-protested.
“Nonsense, you can walk back easily.” Cotter was instantly dismissive.
“So your friend Ruth knows you’re here?” he asked tentatively.
“Oh, yes. She would have come herself but I think she thought that,
if you turned out to be our Sarah, she and I would not want a third party
present while we...well, you know...” He yawned again and lay back in the
armchair. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m over Sarah, have been for years. But I’d
love to know why she did it. Not just why she dumped me but why she walked out
like that. It was so weird. It has been my sword of Damocles for so long...” he
yawned again, apologized and closed his eyes briefly.
Cotter waited for James Morrissey to open his eyes again and was
relieved when he did not.
As soon as Horton stepped through the front door an hour later, he
knew something was terribly wrong. Cotter rushed to meet him, his face flushed
and a glass in his hand. “Thank God you’re back, I’ve been worried sick. Why on
earth have you had your damn phone switched off, that’s what I want to know?”
“Run out of credits,” said Horton gruffly, “And what the hell’s got
into you?” Cotter told him. “You bloody fool!” Horton yelled. He raised a hand
to strike his long-time companion but for once Cotter ducked and darted out of
reach. “Why couldn’t you leave well alone?”
“How could I? He suspects something, I know he does,” Cotter,
wailed, gesticulating with his free hand so that Horton could not help but see
the bracelet.
“You bloody fool!” Horton repeated, lunging forward and grabbing
Cotter by the shirt front and sending the glass flying. “I warned you about
wearing that bloody bracelet. Didn’t I warn you? Now look what you’ve done. Landed us right in
it, that’s what you’ve done. How could you be such a stupid, bloody idiot?” He continued to let fly with his fists even
as Cotter dropped to his knees and cowered, whimpering, on the floor.
James Morrissey was still slumped in the armchair, dead to the
world, when Horton went to take a look at him.
Cotter hovered, making whining noises, a few paces away. “We’ll have
to deal with him, Daz, won’t we? I mean, we’ve got to, haven’t we?”
“Thanks to you, yes,” snapped Horton and swung round with such
vigour that Cotter stumbled backwards and almost fell. “All you had to do was
brazen it out. He’d have gone away thinking it was all a mistake and put you,
me and us out of his mind. Whatever possessed you to bring him here in the
first place, for crying out loud?”
“I thought it would help to know why he’d come looking
for her,” Cotter sniffed.
But Horton was not easily fooled. He recognized a glitter in
Cotter’s eyes. “I bet you lapped up every minute of it.”
It was an accusation, not a question. Cotter had no answer but gazed
expectantly at Horton, waiting for the other to put into words what both were
thinking. “But you’re right,” Horton agreed after taking an even longer pause,
this time taking several swigs of vodka straight from the bottle, “he’ll have
to go.”
They did not expect James Morrissey to recover consciousness, nor
did he disappoint them.
“We’ll push him over the cliff later,” said Horton with a customary
matter-of-factness that Cotter always found reassuring. “What’s for supper?”
Later, much later, Horton drove James Morrissey to within a few
yards of the Devil’s Elbow. Cotter sat beside him, wringing his hands. In the
back seat, their victim slept soundly.
“Will they find traces in him, Daz?” Cotter whimpered.
Horton shrugged. “Why should they be looking? We’ll leave the vodka
bottle in the car. Who knows? They might find traces of that if precious little
else. The chances are there’ll be sod all left to look at anyway. The car will
be a write-off and so will he. But you don’t need me to tell you that. We’ve
been here before, remember?” he added tersely.
“But this is cold-blooded murder,” whimpered Cotter.
“And Sean Brady wasn’t or the tramp? Come off it, Ralph, this is me
you’re talking to. We’re no angels let’s face it. Hell’s bells! We’re one corpse down already,
for heaven’s sake. This one makes two, three if you count the Manners woman.
You may not be counting but I am! Sometimes, Ralph, you’re the pits, the absolute
pits.”
While Horton continued to hurl abuse for most of the journey, a
twisted smile took much of the sting out of it and Cotter was content. Once
Horton had released the handbrake and set the Fiat in motion, both men were
engulfed by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.
Horton hadn’t even realised he had been holding his breath until the
sound of an explosion sounded in his ears and he exhaled in a rush. Cotter
almost urinated in his pants but managed to unzip his fly and relieve himself
on the grass in the nick of time.
“What shall we do about the things he’ll have left at The Fox and
Hounds?” Cotter enquired timidly. “He said he’d booked in for one night at
least.”
“So what? It’s none of our business if he
chooses to cruise around at the dead of night. He’ll not be the first tourist
to have come a cropper at The Elbow and you can bet he won’t be the last. There
has to have been at least one idiot every year since we arrived, I reckon. Who
gives a toss about one more?”
“Suppose someone saw him with me?”
“He was interested in the area, wasn’t he? Who better to fill him in
than the local librarian? I have to say,
flower, I never thought murder could be so easy. It’s like taking candy from a
baby!” he guffawed.
Cotter brooded over the comparison for a long time. The
more he did so, the faster the adrenalin coursed through his veins. It was
easy, so easy. “Too
easy,” he kept telling himself, getting erections and soiling his underpants.
Time and again, he would re-live the entire Sarah Manners charade in his head,
from start to finish. He would watch Sean Brady fall, as if in slow motion, in
a pool of blood…long before hearing the gun explode in his hand. Sean’s now
startled, now appalled expression would spread across a face merging with that
of Sarah Manners then the tramp’s and, finally, Cotter’s own, wide-eyed and
fearful, flushed with excitement. He was
almost disappointed when no one came knocking at the door to enquire whether he
or Daz could throw any light on the death of one, James Morrissey.
At the local library, Sarah Manners laid out a petition on the
counter, calling on the local council to replace recently vandalized warning
signs on the approach to the Devil’s Elbow.
Meanwhile, at her home in Shepherds Bush, Ruth Temple replaced the telephone
receiver with tears in her eyes. She had
just been speaking to Hannah Norwood, James Morrissey’ sister, who had called to
break the tragic news to her. “James, dead?” she enquired of the dead
instrument several times before crumbling, distressed, to the floor.
Ruth blamed herself. After all, if she hadn’t written to say she
thought Sarah might be hiding out in Monk’s Tallow, it would never have entered
his head to go to there in a month of Sundays.
Who had ever heard of Monk’s Tallow anyway, she asked herself? And burst
into tears again. “Oh, James, James,” she sobbed and was crying for herself as
much as for James. Ruth knew it only too well and the knowledge conspired to
heap guilt on despair. “Damn you, Sarah, damn you!” she cried out, “All you
ever did for anyone was give them grief and here you are, still at it, even
after all these years!”
It helped to get angry. Ruth’s though, was ordinarily a very even
temperament and she had calmed down considerably by the time she called her
niece, Julie Simpson, her elder sister Judith’s daughter.
After Julie had promised to come over
directly, Ruth felt faintly reassured and went into the bedroom. She sat on the
edge of the bed, picked up a framed photograph of herself and James and gave a
long sigh. Had she really been so young and happy as she looked then? A friend had taken it, only days before that
fateful night of the evening class when poor James had fallen into the snare
Sarah had carefully laid. Certainly, she
had never doubted that Sarah planned the whole thing. “Damn you, Sarah
Manners!” she shouted at the low ceiling, momentarily forgetting how she
deplored swearing.
.......................................................
“Do you think it’s her, the woman in Monk’s Tallow?”
Julie gasped some hours later, almost forgetting on her excitement that Morrissey had been the love of her aunt's life.
“James is dead isn’t he?” Ruth retorted with uncharacteristic
emotion. “Of course it’s her. It has to be her. She only had to wave a finger
and he’d go into a complete spin for fear he might have upset her. I dread to think what seeing her again must
have done to him, I really do. Mark my words, Julie, that woman killed James.”
You said it was accident,” Julie pointed out gently.
“Accident, poppycock…! Hannah said something about James driving
over a cliff but that’s absurd. James is…was...” she corrected herself tearfully,
“an excellent driver, the best I ever knew. He drove in rallies, for heaven’s
sake. So I’m damn sure he could handle anything some obscure shit hole like Monk’s
Tallow has to offer.” She drained her whiskey, refilled and sat quite still,
bristling and staring into space.
Julie Simpson did her best to hide her shock and confusion. Never
before had she seen her aunt so visibly out of sorts or heard her exclaim even the
mildest profanity.
“These things happen,” she murmured.
“No Julie, people happen, people like Sarah Manners. God, I’d like
to get my hands on the bitch!”
“Perhaps it wasn’t her and that’s why James got so upset and....” Her
voice tailed off miserably. What could she say? Ruth had carried a torch for
James Morrissey for over twenty years. Julie suspected her aunt had never quite
abandoned all hope that they might even get together again one day. On a
personal level, she had disliked the man although, to be fair, she had only met him
once, upon his recent return from Canada. Her first impression had been of a
good looking, clever man who had plenty of charm and knew only too well how to
use those attributes to his best advantage. She was in no doubt, however, that
her aunt adored him and would be feeling utterly crushed by the news of his
death.
“It’s all my fault,” sobbed Ruth Temple and fell into her niece’s
arms, “I should never have told him there was the slightest chance of finding
Sarah. If only that wretched Hathaway woman had kept her mouth shut. It’s so
unfair, Julie. It’s all so unfair...”
James Morrissey was cremated in his hometown of Ely in
Cambridgeshire. Besides Ruth Temple, the sparse gathering comprised his sister
Hannah accompanied by her husband and one of their sons, an elderly lady whom
Julie later discovered was a former neighbour who had often looked after James
as a child, Julie herself and Liam Brady. Liam was an old friend of Julie’s and
reliably good company at the best – or worst – of times. He hadn’t hesitated to
tag along and give her moral support. They had driven to Auntie Ruth’s house
then joined her in the main funeral car for the slow, sombre journey to the
crematorium. The others had congregated outside and followed them in respectful
silence through the glass panelled doors of a squat, red brick building, all
eyes carefully averted from the coffin, everyone plainly wishing they were some
place else. The service was short but seemed to go on forever.
One aspect of the funeral service that would always
haunt Julie, not least because came as such a surprise, was how Liam Brady
sang. He had a beautiful voice.
Only Julie and Liam accompanied Ruth back to
the little house in Shepherds Bush. Over a salad brunch, Ruth mentioned that
she had told James’ sister that she would fetch a few things from the inn at Monk’s
Tallow. “Apparently, they’ve been making a bit of a fuss. It’s the least I can
do, of course, although I can’t say as I’m looking forward to it.”
“I can easily drive down and collect them,” Liam offered.
“Would you? That would be
such a load off my mind,” Ruth Temple confessed, “To be quite honest, I don’t
trust myself to speak to Sarah. You’d have thought, at the very least, she’d
have turned up at the funeral wouldn’t you? But, no, she hasn’t even the common
decency to send flowers!”
“We don’t know for sure, Auntie...” Julie ventured.
“I do. I know as sure as day is day and night is night.
It’s her and somehow she got to him, like she always did. It’s just as
well she didn’t come today. I tell you, my dears, I’d have strangled the bitch
with my own bare hands.”
Julie Simpson and Liam Brady exchanged meaningful glances.
Liam was impressed. Having only met Ruth Temple once
before, he’d taken her for a rather serious, humourless woman, although
pleasant enough. Now, hearing her express herself with such passion, he warmed
to Julie’s auntie and, even more so, to the prospect of looking up the
notorious Sarah Manners.
Only vaguely did he wonder why the name Monk’s Tallow
rang a distant bell.
To be continued
